*AJ

As promised here is the rest of the artwork which I have not posted yet. Like I said in my previous post I got a near perfect score and I was shocked by this. Other students, their artwork to me looks so much better. So much more creative. But they asked what I was interested in doing and I think they take this into account when they decide on the scores. If I had said illustration I probably would not have been graded as well but the group I will go into on Saturday will be focussed on Theatre Design, Fashion Design, Interior Architecture...and one other I can't remember right now. Essentially on observing our environment and it's characteristics and designing/creating things that fit with it. So my eye for proportion, line, colour etc is very valuable whereas someone who can paint a near perfect landscape may not have the qualities to be as successful in this course (just as I would not be as successful in the fine art group they will be going into).

I am disappointed with these photos but I do not have time to retake them. They are all at a strong angle which means the proportion looks a bit wacky. Oh well.

I am posting the good as well as the not good and even the really really bad. You can see the list of what we were supposed to do in this post. These are in the order that I did them.

pencil, 2.5hrs Btw the angle that this and the photo below are taken at is very very bad. In the drawings, the top of the bottle and the bottom of the bottle are both the same width. They are not as they appear in these photos -- I just don't have time to pull everything out and retake the photos unfortunately :(

ink and pen with brush in background and for solid colouring, 2hrs

Click readmore for the rest! (23 photos total)

Tags: proportion | line | shape | drawing | painting | preparatory course | foundation course

*AJ

Well I'm a victim of my own stupidity. I made a blog posting the other day and never submitted it...just left the window open until night time when I shut the computer down. Bravo AJ, bravo!

I have my first class since well before Christmas on Saturday. I have a lot of work to do tomorrow and the next day because I did not do them over the holidays. It was not so much procrastination as it was that my bf worked very few days and it was lovely to sit on the couch day after day watching sci-fi with him. It was a sci-fi, Baileys and take out holiday -- heaven!

In the next two days I have ten drawings, two large paintings plus about a dozen puppets to make. I don't know if I will get it done. I meant to start on Tuesday but a project I thought would take only a couple hours took the whole day and then last night I could not sleep and have felt too ill today to do anything creative...tired ill, not sick.

The week after that, Saturday the 16th I believe, we have our final evaluation. I have to drag everything I've made during the entire course and set it up in a display to be critiqued. Based on the critique, my instructor's input, and my input my specialization will be chosen. We're supposed to be thinking over these holidays what we want that to be but we have not been told what our options are so everyone is a bit lost there.

I guess I will find out soon!

Tags: paintings | homework | drawing

*AJ

Well, I see everyone is writing a blog and I don't want to feel left out so hello :)

Like I said in my last post, everyone on this site is in the midst of their final projects and it becomes difficult to make updates...you either don't have any news or if you do you're exhausted and don't want to write anything. For me, it's not quite so bad but I do have a huge project due tomorrow that I didn't start until today. By huge I mean we had 4 weeks to do it. My heart just wasn't in it at first and then I got excited to start it a couple of days ago and the website broke badly and I spent about 22 hours total over two days (hey I have to eat, sleep, and watch Stargate with my man you know) fixing it. Actually it's not totally fixed yet, new registrations are still turned off but it's working so I'm happy.

So anyway today was the first day, since I decided I wanted to do it, that I was actually able to. I got up, went shopping as tomorrow is my first Sinterklaas and we hadn't gotten gifts yet. Apparently the family all brings inexpensive gifts, puts them in a big pile and then plays games to win them. I spent 21euros and got 19 gifts, I'm pretty proud of that...oh, where was I?

Yes so I did the gifts. Then I came home and started making the 2-d puppets. We are to take images from magazines, use Acrylic Binder (btw I'm pretty sure after working with it all day today that this is just white glue, someone tell me if I am wrong), put it on them, let it dry, paint the puppets if we want and cut them up and use twist-tie metal to make the legs, arms, etc move. I found 15 I can use, covered them in binder and patiently waited for them to dry.

They didn't. So I decided to build a light box while I was waiting. My reasoning was that it would help with all the other paintings I have to do tonight if I can just trace onto the good paper rather than try to draw directly on it. Then it was 3pm and time for my acupuncture & cupping appointment where I got beat up by an old woman. I got home at 4:15 but was not up to thinking so I finished the light box. It's pretty awesome:

Pretty good eh? The room is not that dark but because of the contrast with the light the camera had a hard time picking anything up. This photo is from a slightly different angle and I lightened it quite a bit (you can tell because it's so grainy) so that you can see the actual box:

It's a cardboard box with one of those frameless picture frame things you can get almost anywhere...usually they are for certificates but I think people use them a lot for pictures now too because they're so cheap (3.50euros for 45x60cm). The bottom of the box I made a couple slits and bent the flaps more than usual so the light box is actually on an angle. It should be if you plan to paint on it, even just a little bit, otherwise the paint will pool. I lined the inside with tinfoil so that it would bounce the light everywhere and there you can see my lamp, just an ordinary desk lamp, which sits about half a cm inside the box. You don't want to put a bare bulb in there otherwise the light will not be even, it needs to be shone out in all directions and bounced off the sides.

Well now it is 5:30pm and I am feeling a bit recovered from my appointment (51 needles, I counted, take a bit out of you, it does take some time to recover -- at least for me!). I have to clean up the giant mess I made before my boyfriend gets home and start on those other paintings...using my new lightbox! (I'm so excited for it! I had to leave mine in Canada because it would have gotten wrecked in the shipping and I couldn't afford $100 to get another here - btw this one cost me less than 5 euros including the 70watt bulb).

Oh, I took pictures as I was making it so that I could post a tutorial when I have time in the next few weeks :)

Tags: puppets | crafts | illustration | drawing | lightbox

LaurenLovesFashion

“When you consider the buttery softness of flannel… the smooth gloss of broadcloth… the rich depth of velour… it is difficult to imagine that all these textures and hundreds more could come from one fiber –Wool.”

I’m in Textiles class right now. We have been studying wool and silk. My teacher just started a movie about the process wool needs to go through. Bare with me… as I talk to myself and try to review wool for my test.

Just in case you don’t know… Wool refers to fibers from various animals including sheep, Angora and cashmere goats, camel, alpaca, and llama.

Steps In Processing:

1. Grading and/or sorting
2. Washing
3. Blending of types of wool
4. Dyeing
5. Carding
6. Combing
7. Drawing
8. Spinning
9. Weaving or knitting 
10. Finishing

My teacher passed around a sample of wool at each stage of the process.

Grading: evaluating the whole fleece for fineness and length.

Washing: The wool is washed thoroughly with a soap or detergent and water solution where it looses 30-70% of its weight when natural grease and dirt are removed. Wool is passed through a squeeze roller and dried.

Blending: Wool is usually spun from different types of yarn, so it can achieve a certain color and uniformity. Blending is made by mixing different wools.

Dyeing: Dyeing can be done at any point of the process. If the wool is dyed after it is spun into yarn, it is called yarn dying. The wool is piece dyed if it is dyed after it is made into a garment. The proteins in wool help hold the dye extremely well.

Carding: Carding is the process of opening the wool fibers, separating them and laying them parallel to each other. The yarn is passed through rollers that have teeth on it, straightening the fibers as they pass through. The carded wool is then divided into “slivers.”

Combing: The next step would be for the carded slivers to be combed. Combing makes the fibers even more parallel, removing any short fibers in the process.

Drawing: The wool is now drawn through machines, which reduce the slivers into slightly, twisted “roving.” The next stage would to be put onto spools, ready for spinning.

Spinning: After the spools are in place on the spinning frame, the ends of the roving are pulled through rollers, which lengthen the fibers even more. They are put on to bobbins that apply a specified twist to the yarns.

Weaving or Knitting: Weaving is the actual production of the fabric, by interlacing two sets of yarns at right angles. Threads running lengthwise are called the warp. The threads running crosswise are called weft. The knitting is done on machines, which resemble the process of hand knitting. Knitting is formed by interlocking series of loops of one or more yarns.

Finishing: Everything that happens to the wool after it leaves the loom is considered a finishing process. There are vast choices of finishes for wool. They can alter the appearance all the way to how the wool performs.

Wow! That’s quite a process to get wool cloth. Thanks for helping me study… Hopefully I’ll remember it for my test. Next time you go shopping and pick up a wool garment, take a minute to study the label. See what kind of wool it is, try to picture the process your garment had to go through in order to get into your hands. 

Tags: sheep | wool | grading | washing | carding | combing | finishing | spinning | drawing

Whisper

Okay, so I promised myself that I'd get this done by the end of the week, and lo, here it is. :)

The Spider Queen design started off with this initial sketch, which most of you have probably already seen.

See below the cut for more pictures and information.

Tags: costume design | corsetry | theatre design | drawing | illustration | design

elizabeth

Popping in for a few minutes to share a couple design sketches. I'm working on getting these in marker, doing flats for them (info on that to come), and putting everything together in a book. It's not much to write about at this point, honestly. I'll be posting soon about my tailoring crit today and the mock-up I made for that crit, as well as a photo of our practice jacket, which is due Friday (and will be making me crazy until then).

Love, Elizabeth

Tags: drawing | fashion | illustration | ideation | design process

Whisper

The design for the Spider Queen is finally finished. Thanks to the feedback I got on the forums, I focused more on going for a grey/white corset. I went through a good few variations on this (and got utterly sick of drawing the costume by the end of it!), but I finally found one that I think fits. That'll have to be a teaser for now, as it's midnight and I haven't scanned any of the recent work just yet.

Currently I'm making the toile for the corset itself. It's based on a yellow-flossed black one from the Symington collection, (though I found the corset and pattern in Corsets: Historical Patterns and Techniques by Jill Salen. Scaling up the pattern took an age, and I'd have been utterly lost without inch-square marked pattern paper. That stuff is a godsend. Half of the toile is done now, since I've been getting progressively more and more tired, and thus have stitched wrong sides together countless times now. That'll teach me to sew when I'm tired.. :P Well, you know it never will, but there we go.

In other news, my dissertation research is going okay. I've chosen a question based around the use of animals as a metaphor for human behavior. It's got a lot of meat to it, and as a bonus I get to watch a tonne of old Don Bluth films and Looney Tunes, and call it research. Muahahahaha. Currently reading The Annotated Alice, for info on the background of the White Rabbit, Cheshire Cat, and other animal characters that featured prominently in Caroll's work. I'll have to read at least a chapter of Gulliver's Travels fairly soon, and *sigh* Animal Farm. It's an alright book, but I had to read it in school, and that sours any text for life.

Tags: corsetry | costume design | Corsets | toiles | drawing | theatre design | design

elizabeth

Just wanted to share my latest changes to my fashion croquis. A few posts down, I shared my croquis development throughout this quarter, and this is my final 5. I think they're a good mixture of life-like and stylized. I've been working on my designs for our CFDA project in marker, with these croquis, and I'm really pleased with the elegance that has resulted. I'll be back later this week with a tailoring update and possibly a sample page of my CFDA entry.

Love, Elizabeth

Tags: drawing | illustration | croquis | template | CFDA | fashion drawing

elizabeth

Today I thought I would show you a few different illustration media that you can choose from. Each medium gives your drawing a different feeling. They all have their own complexities, disadvantages, and advantages. And, they all take a lot of time and patience!

First is colored pencil. We didn't do a lot with colored pencil. It was covered briefly during my freshman year fine art drawing class, and was used to draw fruit and cylinders. In my experience, you have to put down lots of light layers of color to get the best results. This takes a long time and a lot of pencils! But when done well, the final drawing is beautiful and smooth, incorporating several different shades of color to make one greater color. Here's a recent collection of colored pencil drawings (with some marker mixed in). These were done really quickly and don't at all look like a final drawing should, but it's the only example I have at the moment.

Click below to read more!

Tags: ideation | 3-d sketches | illustration | watercolor | fashion | drawing | painting | collage | colored pencil | marker | sketching

elizabeth

My journey through drawing classes over the years has not exactly been smooth; let's just say that drawing is not something that comes naturally to me. It seems like our first year of drawing, all my classmates shot off into the atmosphere and became drawing stars, while I was left here on Earth, the engine of my space shuttle idling and fizzling out.

If you get the chance to take a live figure drawing class, take it! This is one thing that could be improved about my curriculum. We have a fine arts drawing class our freshman year, where we learned to draw apples, hands, and cars, but no actual model. In the remaining years, I've had several fashion drawing courses. I can't figure out how my teachers thought we could learn to draw a stylized, 9 head high fashion figure when we didn't know how to draw an average, 7 head high figure from life.

As a result of this flaw in the curriculum and the amazing talent of my classmates, I've constantly felt like I'm trying to catch up, still trying to learn the basics. I hate showing anyone my drawings, because I'm so self concious of their flaws, but I'm going to grin and bear it for you all. So you can see just how much time and patience it can take - but also so you can have hope (if it doesn't come naturally to you) that you, too, can be a fashion illustrator... at least well enough to communicate your design ideas!

Come read more...!

Tags: illustration | drawing | design | fashion | homework | ideation

elizabeth

While preparing some of my drawing/CFDA project to show you guys, I remembered a project I did in the spring quarter last year. We spent the quarter focusing on watercolor fashion illustration, working with a paint palette that was apparently exactly what Monet used.

Our palette included: cadmium red, permanent rose, cadmium yellow, winsor green, winsor blue, ultramarine, burnt sienna, and raw umber. We also used white mixed with the cadmium yellow and an orange to create skin tone. We bought black, but only used it in the smallest amount possible mixed with other colors. I eventually bought a few additional colors - I don't remember what they were, but I tried to keep it basic so that they would mix well with the soft Monet colors.

Anyway, here is my final project for the quarter. We put together a collection of paintings that we had done all quarter, paintings that would group together well. We then fixed them as needed and ordered them up, creating a cohesive presentation for the season we chose. It's hard to see detail, but it's a pretty long file - We scanned in all our drawings to rearrange them and put them together, then had that file printed 11x17".

I'd love to see some of your work, whether it's watercolor, pencil sketches, marker, whatever works for you! Feel free to post images of it in our Showcase Forum

Love, Elizabeth

Tags: painting | drawing | fashion | monet | watercolor | illustration